The RW said they were lying, putting America in danger, etc. but now the great and wonderful IAEA says Iran is getting nukes and they are so right and Obama is putting the country in danger, etc., ad nauseum.

Movin' on down the Tarkio RoadHeaded up to Crete NebraskaTrying my best to set the highway on fireBut my bicycle won't go no faster

Tarkio Road is a motherIt's just like oh so many othersWhere the children reject youAnd the police inspect youLookin' inside the trunk under the hood hopin' to findThe secret places where you always keep your mindWoh–oh-no Tarkio Road

Abbie and Rubin lyin’ in jailLearning about the price of bein’ freeTrying to live the constitutional lifeAnd being held back by hypocrisyCarry the load my brotherYou're just like oh so many othersWho the children rejectedAnd the police inspectedYou’re tied to the chair manacled bound and gaggedIs that your face on the American flag?Woh–oh-no carry the load

Twenty-four hours of barbed wire fenceFifty-five years of pollutionEveryone knows how the puzzle was laidBut can anyone recall the solutionTarkio Road is a motherIt's just like oh so many othersWhere the people infect youBut they never elect youNo reason or cause that you may have perfectly soundThe blind looker’s gonna' try and cut it down

For you youngsters, Abbie and Rubin refer to Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Google 'em. And by now it's 95 years of pollution. The song was recorded 40 years before BP's Gulf disaster and long before much more. My favorite line is "No reason or cause that you may have perfectly sound The blind looker’s gonna' try and cut it down." Sound familiar?

This is the contradiction at the heart of the WikiLeaks project. Given what I have read Assange saying, he seems to me to be an opponent of war and a supporter of peace. Yet what he did in leaking these documents, if the leaking did anything at all, is make diplomacy more difficult. It is not that it will lead to war by any means; it is simply that one cannot advocate negotiations and then demand that negotiators be denied confidentiality in which to conduct their negotiations. No business could do that, nor could any other institution. Note how vigorously WikiLeaks hides the inner workings of its own organization, from how it is funded to the people it employs.,,,It is difficult to see what harm the leaks have done, beyond embarrassment. It is also difficult to understand why WikiLeaks thinks it has changed history or why Assange lacks a sufficient sense of irony not to see the contradiction between his position on openness and his willingness to keep secrets when they benefit him. But there is also something important here, which is how this all was leaked in the first place.

Nothing game changing apparently has been leaked. If there are some really REALLY dark secrets out there, and I'm sure there are, they're not in these docs. They apparently don't change anything but make some faces red.

we walked into this furniture store that's closing and having a big sale. The place was closing because their bank line of credit funding abruptly and completely stopped. Everyone is getting laid off in the chain. This white guy that works there and who was probably in his late 60's walks up and we expressed regret about their situation and especially his as the conversation turned to his age and getting laid off. He then says we've got to get "that guy" out of the WH and a couple of other comments that blamed Obama for his plight. He mentioned something about people not paying their mortgages and a couple of other slights. WRONG THING TO SAY TO THE WRONG PEOPLE! My wife was civil enough to just walk off because she didn't want to hear it. I couldn't let that go.

Speaking of people not paying mortgages, I asked the guy if he remembered the phrase "ownership society" and who used it. I asked him if he ever heard of NINJA loans (No income, No job, No assets). He said he did. I told him they were legal because Republicans made them legal. I told him that now that Democrats are fixing the abuses by banks and business banks have admitted they are not lending, and businesses are not hiring because they do not want things to improve so they can get Obama. Banks and businesses are intentionally hoarding their money. Republicans block everything because they don't want things to get better so now he's getting laid off. I told him this entire thing started long before Obama was even a US Senator and got rolling when Republicans had control of the WH, Congress and the SCOTUS. I told him that the whole teabagger movement is nothing but a tool for big banks, Wall Street and big corporations to block or undo everything Democrats were trying to fix so they can go back to what they were doing before. I told him the free market doesn't regulate itself. That's not only a fallacy, it's ideological propaganda and that everyone that voted for Republicans this year just gave the keys back to the party that drove the truck into the ditch. I told him the only thing free markets do is promote unfettered greed. I told him that it was also much easier to blame "that black guy" for everything and that none of this started Jan 20, 2009 that in fact, it was at it's peak then. I reminded him of 750K people laid off in January 2009 alone. I told him the whole country, and actually the whole civilized world owed Obama a thank you for saving capitalism and the world economy from complete collapse. I told him a few other choice things over the course of 10 minutes of laying into him. I told him I couldn't believe people were so stupid as to vote Republicans back in.

When I was finally through with him he actually said, "You're right." which is what I wanted to hear him say.

I HATE it when, just because we're white, other white teabaggers automatically assume we hate Obama too. Wrong thing for this guy to say to us. You might say I should have told the manager. But there's no reason to. He's putting himself out of a job anyway because he supports Republicans. But the manager of the place is a good family friend and a liberal. So I might tell him after the stores close and they're laid off. But I suspect everyone knows he's a winger anyway.

For the going on 10 years I've been here on DU, and for many years before that, I've often been angry at just how hypocritical the right wing can be. We've all asked, "How can they say that if they believe < fill in the blank >." That blank can be filled in with many different things such as "they believe the US was founded as a Christian country" in response to posts like I found at FR absolutely excusing Christine O'Donnell's "dabbling in witchcraft":

"I *almost* feel sorry for the RINOs. They pointed out she is (allegedly) unelectable. We don’t care. They pointed out she (allegedly) has financial issues. We don’t care. Now they point out that 11 years ago she claimed to once (as in, even more than 11 years ago) dabbled in witchcraft. Guess what — we still don’t care!"

That was the last straw for me. I have finally decided there are no rules. There are no guidelines for these people to abide by. They make it up as they go along. Antonin Scalia says the 14th amendment wasn't written to ban sex bias. But as whoneedstickets points out in that thread neither does the constitution give corporations the same rights as persons. But to them, that's OK too. There are no rules. There is no "originalist" reading of the constitution.

And there are many more examples of this type thing. To wit, I no longer am going to try to understand their logic because there is none. They have no logic. BECAUSE, the only logic is to do and say anything and everything necessary to enrich the corporations and to tighten back their grips that we were just starting to pry apart. It's all about the rich and making money. If you want logic, that's what it's all about. And the rich and the corporations have their tool fools, both paid and otherwise (such as the above ass at FR) that will make up anything they need to whenever it's convenient. They have no rules.

No one plays the victim better than Republics and the RW. Mention anything about white people and they are so offended. Mention anything about Christianity and they say they're persecuted. This is nothing short of passive aggressive which is intended to mess with you. Here's how to handle it:

Step 1 Remain calm in the presence of a passive aggressive person no matter what happens. Seeing you disturbed and distraught reinforces the behavior.

Step 2 Stop feeling guilty for the passive aggressive person's behavior. The passive aggressive person may try to make you feel guilty, but you need to remember that this person is responsible for his own interactions with others.

I find myself seething with frustration at two of the people I admire most in the realm of progressive issues and politics: Michael Moore and Dennis Kucinich. Watching Countdown on MSNBC last night brought it all to a head. I listened to President Obama tell the story of Natoma Canfield, a woman priced out of the health insurance market only to be diagnosed with leukemia.

Then I listened to Ms. Canfield herself, speaking from her hospital bed after a day of treatments, answering Lawrence O'Donnell's question about what she would tell her Congressman, Dennis Kucinich, who says he'll vote against this legislation because it doesn't go far enough.

Natoma Canfield said simply this:

"Well, it just seems to me that everything needs a start"

And with that, a self-employed house cleaner and cancer patient in Ohio spoke more eloquently and with more wisdom than either Michael Moore or Dennis Kucinich ever have on this issue.

First, if you haven't, watch this segment of President Obama yesterday, telling Natoma Canfield's story. It starts at about 2:05.

The Obama White House looks like it is has taken a page out of the playbook of the late Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler. In a fit of pique, during the 1972 presidential campaign, Ziegler barred Rolling Stone reporter and Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson from flying on the lead campaign press plane, notwithstanding that Thompson had been covering the race, that there was space on the plane, and that Thompson was an accredited reporter. Thompson's problem was that he did not report things the way the Committee to Reelect the President would have liked things to have been reported.

Well, Robert Gibbs,the Obama press secretary, is doing all he can to follow in Ziegler's footsteps. Gibbs is trying to get the news organizations that cover the White House to drop Fox from the White House press pool. Pressed on his efforts to get the press to dump Fox from the pool, Gibbs demurred. Despite repeated questioning by ABC's Jake Tapper, Gibbs would not give a straight answer on where the White House stood on Fox and pool coverage.

Can you believe Fox is actually invoking Nixon's treatment of Hunter S Thompson as a reporter? Have they watched "Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas"? That reporter they're invoking?

And, apparently they never read Hunter S Thompson's article in The Atlantic when Nixon died:

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing -- a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.,,,The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the body of the man who was, after all, the President of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable -- some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogenically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian Mainland.

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